Pair Plead Guilty in Firebombing Case : Dana Point Teachers Hired Mercenaries to Squelch Ex-Employees

LOS ANGELES —  Two Dana Point schoolteachers pleaded guilty Monday to hiring a band of mercenaries from Alabama to firebomb two cars belonging to their former employees.

Charlotte Ruth Wyckoff, 52, and Elizabeth Leta Hamilton, 39, entered their pleas before U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler, one day before the women were to go to trial, initially with three other defendants.

The other three, including Frank J. Camper, a mercenary training instructor from Hueytown, Ala., originally had been scheduled to go to trial today in Stotler’s court in Los Angeles. Two additional defendants--Paul Johnson, 42, and James Larosa Cuneo, 22--previously pleaded guilty to two charges of firebombing and have agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

Wyckoff and Hamilton, housemates who ran a chain of private schools in Orange and San Bernardino counties, agreed Monday to plead guilty to two of 10 federal charges filed against them last June.

If convicted on all counts, the women would have faced a maximum of 100 years in prison. Under terms of the plea bargain, each now faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and up to $375,000 in fines.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles J. Stevens said the women also may be ordered to make restitution to two people whose cars were destroyed by homemade firebombs in the predawn hours of Aug. 13, 1985.

Federal prosecutors dropped conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges against Wyckoff and Hamilton. It has been alleged that they tried to hire a man to prevent Wyckoff’s daughter, Shirley Wright, 28, from testifying against them.

At the request of their attorneys, Wyckoff and Hamilton were ordered by Judge Stotler to undergo psychiatric examinations at separate federal prison hospitals before sentencing on Dec. 22.

In a prepared statement read in court Monday, the women admitted that they hired Camper and four associates to end a dispute between them and six former employees.

“We told them to do whatever they had to do to put an end to these disputes,” Wyckoff and Hamilton said in the joint statement.

But Wyckoff told Stotler that they did not want to know exactly what kind of action Camper’s group planned to take. In response to questioning from the judge, Wyckoff acknowledged that they were aware that any such action “could include criminal activity.”

In June, a second federal grand jury indictment charged Wyckoff and Hamilton with conspiracy, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Wyckoff and Hamilton were accused of approaching another inmate at Sybil Brand Institute and soliciting the services of the inmate’s boyfriend to harm Wright.

However, the government informant who allegedly arranged a June 23 phone call that was taped by a federal agent later recanted her story and said Wyckoff did not make the call.

Wyckoff and Hamilton declined comment before they were returned to the women’s jail facility in East Los Angeles where they have been held without bail since their arrest in May.

Meanwhile, Camper’s attorney, Walter M. Henritze Jr., said he will argue that plastic milk containers used to hold a gasoline-and-soap mixture that blew up the cars were not destructive devices requiring registration under federal law. Government prosecutors have charged the remaining defendants with possession of unregistered destructive devices, among other charges.

Henritze said he also would question whether the federal court has jurisdiction over what he considers should be an arson case under state jurisdiction.